Free Tatiana March by Surrender to the Knight

their raised swords glinting in the winter sun.
    “Am I offered shelter overnight?” the king’s messenger asked.
    “Of course,” Laird Olaf assured the man. “I have a letter to send. I’ll write it tonight so you can leave at first light in the morning.”
    Brenna closed her eyes, the icy winds seeping into her. It was no use. The king wouldn’t change his mind. Erskine had four times as many men as Kilgarren. It was only a question of how long they could hold out in a siege. They would have to surrender or die, and she knew that Laird Olaf would never surrender. She had feared the day he would leave, but now she had gained a new fear that eclipsed the old one—that he would stay and die.

Chapter Six
    Humility didn’t sit well on him. When King James had accused Olaf’s brother of treason and stripped away the Stenholm earldom, both the title and the lands, awarding them to Stefan Navarro, Olaf had sworn never to look back, never to dwell on what he had lost. And here he was now, writing to Navarro, begging for a favor.
    In the armory at Stenholm Castle—or whatever name his ancestral home went by under Navarro’s rule—there should be a suit of armor Olaf had worn as a boy. A suit of armor that would fit a small female.
    He finished the letter, torn between sacrificing his pride and the need to protect Lady Brenna. Protecting his wife won, as he knew it always would. She’d never agree to stay out of the fighting. He’d promised to treat her as his equal, let her be a knight, and she would hold him to that promise. The best he could hope for was to equip her with proper armor, and trust that he had taught her well in the use of a sword.
    Olaf gave the sealed parchment to the king’s messenger, who would pass by the Stenholm ancestral lands on his way back to Edinburgh. Then Olaf took a small tour of the village, as he did every night, to check that all was well among his vassals. Upon his return, he secured the castle entrance and made sure the animals were resting peacefully at the stable.
    All tasks completed, he went up the ladder to Lady Brenna. Since their wedding night, she’d developed a habit of getting into bed while he did his evening rounds, and he’d come back upstairs to find her huddled beneath the covers like a frightened virgin.
    She responded when he touched her, he couldn’t complain. But she never touched him first. Never came to him at daylight and tilted her face up for a casual kiss, never whispered any words of affection to him. Olaf wasn’t sure himself when his marriage had ceased to be just about lands. At some point in the past two weeks, he’d started yearning for that devoted look in Lady Brenna’s eyes, the look he’d seen in the eyes of women who were in love with their husbands.
    However, today she was not asleep in bed but waiting for him, sitting in one of the two chairs that flanked the small, square table. A fire roared in the chimney, unusual because they tried not to waste firewood. She wore nothing but a thin linen shift. Her hair fell in a tumble of midnight curls around her shoulders.
    “Why are you not abed?” he asked.
    “I’ve waited to talk to you.”
    “We can talk in bed.”
    “I...” Her brows gathered into a worried frown as she looked up at him. “It’s no use writing to the king. He won’t change his mind. He’ll let Erskine have Kilgarren.”
    “We’ll fight Erskine.”
    “No. I mean...surely, you should leave now.”
    “Leave?” The rough sound of his voice echoed around the room. “What are you talking about, woman?” He clenched his fists in anger. “Is that how little you think of me? That I’d run away like a coward? That I’d turn my back on the people who have accepted me as their laird? That I’d abandon my wife, betray my honor as a knight, and be forced to hide from my shame in foreign lands, never returning to Scotland again?”
    “I...I didn’t mean it like that.”
    “Then what did you mean, my lady wife?” he